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Metafiction for Kids

A while ago I had a patron who was looking for metafiction picture books for a children's literature class. I had so much fun looking up titles that could work that I kept going long after (and I mean LONG after) finding enough books for him. I put together a list of books for the rest of my staff in case we get this question again and I'm sharing with you all too. I will note that this in no way a complete list of all metafiction books but simply ones we happen to own at my branch. I hope this will be useful for reference and collection development purposes. I happen to be a fan of metafiction myself, so please share in the comments if you have a favorite title not on the list and I'd love to read it!

To start us off, I loved the definition of "metafiction" from What Do We Do All Day: A metafictional text is one that subverts traditional, straightforward storytelling.

I like to do a lot of nursery rhymes with the parachute for a few reasons:Parents/kids are more likely to participate in activities where the content is already familiarI already know them so I don't have to learn a whole bunch of material at once (just being honest here)Easy for the families to replicate this activities at home with whatever props they might have. If they (or you!) don't have a parachute, a bed sheet or blanket can be substituted easily. Even a beach towel would work for one parent and one child to play together. This is my mean reason and I tried to hammer this in at all three programs I did the past two weeks! Parachute …

One of my favorite things to do in my library is create displays. I thought it might be helpful if I shared the calendar that I drew up to make sure I don't miss any of the "must-do" displays. It is so helpful if you can take people over to a seasonal display versus trying to look up in the catalog or find Easter books or whatever. I hope this helps any new librarians who might be overwhelmed by the process of marketing your collection!

As a general rule, I tend to keep displays up for about 3-4 weeks or if I run out of books all together. One tip I'd recommend if you have the space for multiple displays is to change one display in each space every week and rotate around the youth department like that. For example, one week you put up a new picture books display, then nonfiction, then YA/teen, etc. Don't forget to raid your CD and DVD collections for a multi-category display.

Here's one of my favorite parachute activities! I actually mentioned it a few months ago when talking about my summer parachute playtime but it's become a storytime staple since. We've been doing this here at my 2 and 3 year old storytimes and it's a great activity that I thought deserved its own post. I learned the song "Sleeping Bunnies" from Mary and I had the idea to adapt it to a parachute activity.

Here are the words:Sleeping BunniesSee the little bunnies sleeping til it's nearly noon. Come and let us gently wake them with a merry tune. Oh, how are still. Are they ill? Wake up soon. (Here I yell "WAKE UP BUNNIES!" and the kids shake the parachute.)